Fireside by Susan Wiggs (autobiographies to read .TXT) 📕

of his jeans, undoing the top button. Sirens went off in his head, drowning out everything. His hands, clumsy with excitement, tried to figure out what to do. He found the front zipper of her sweatshirt and oh-so-slowly coaxed it downward until the shirt fell open, exposing the low-cut top.

Bo had spent many an hour picturing what it would be like the first time. This was nothing like the experience he’d conjured up in his imagination. This was…overwhelming, the biggest thing that had ever happened to him and that included catching a home-run ball at the Astrodome when he was twelve. He couldn’t believe she was going to let him do it. She was an angel, a goddess, a dream come true.

His hands shook as he slipped them around her and up to her shoulders, feeling her impossibly soft skin. He was close to losing it and making a fool of himself, and he clutched her upper arms to steady himself. She gasped and winced—with pain, not pleasure.

Misgivings sloshed over him like a bucket of ice water. He took a step back, breathing hard. “Aw, jeez, did I hurt you?”

“What?” She regarded him through half-lidded eyes. “No, honey, it’s nothing.”

As gently as he could, he took hold of her hand, angled her arm toward the light slanting in through a gap in the drapes. On the softest part of her upper arm was a stark bruise in the shape of a very large hand.

“Who hurt you?” Bo asked her.

She offered a short, dismissive laugh. “It’s not important. Let’s just get back to what we were doing.”

There was a part of Bo—a very specific, out-of-control part that wanted to do exactly that. But something had quieted the sirens in his head and turned his brain back on.

“Ma’am,” he said, “we can’t be doing this.”

She stared at him. To his horror, tears pooled in her eyes, threatening to spill over. Suddenly she looked old to him, and tired, and just so sad and desperate, needing something from him, not just sex but comfort and understanding and a hundred other things he didn’t have it in him to give.

“What the hell are you talking about?” she asked. “You know you want to do it. You’re dying to do it. I haven’t felt a hard-on like that since I was in high school.”

His face and ears caught fire. “Ms. Jamison, you and I both know this is wrong.”

“There’s nothing wrong with two people sharing a little something,” she said. “Don’t you know that? Don’t you understand?”

He felt scared of her desperation. “Not wrong in that way. I mean wrong because it’s not going to fix that.” He indicated the bruise on her arm.

“You stupid little shit,” she burst out. “What the hell do you know about anything?” Her tone was harsh, cutting like a knife.

“Ma’am, I’m sorry. I don’t mean any disrespect—”

“Then shut your mouth right now.” She snatched her shirt off the bed, stuffed her bruised arms into the sleeves. She was crying openly now, her face contorted. “You’re an idiot, you know that? You blew off a perfectly nice afternoon. And believe me, I won’t offer again, ever.”

He didn’t know what else to say. He was an idiot; every horny cell in his body was telling him so. He couldn’t, though, he just couldn’t have sex with Ms. Jamison, not with her being so sad and hurt. It wouldn’t be right, no matter what she said.

Bo learned something that day. He learned that, incredible as it seemed, having sex was not the answer to every problem. Which was totally weird because it was all he thought about. Listening to her car door slam, then the angry revving of the engine, he felt sorry for her. He knew he couldn’t help her, and that depressed him.

Feeling the woman curled against him now, he still wondered what he’d taken from that day. What if he’d done something different? Taken what she’d offered? Given her…what? He’d been a fourteen-year-old with a boner. He didn’t have anything to give her.

That had been half a lifetime ago, but sometimes—like now—he wondered if he’d learned anything at all about women. Did he have anything to offer Kimberly? Or should he get out now, before it was too late?

It was dark still. A digital clock across the room read 5:47 a.m., its green digits floating unanchored in the darkness. AJ would still be asleep. Bo could sneak into his own bed where he belonged.

Except it felt so damn good right where he was. He lay unmoving for a few minutes, loath to awaken her and reluctant to disturb the nest of warmth created by their comfortably entwined bodies. She was so soft, and she smelled so good…The temptation to start kissing her again, to finish what he’d started last night, burned through him like a forest fire.

AJ, he reminded himself. He didn’t want the kid to wake up and find him gone. Bo shifted slowly and carefully, drawing his chest and shoulders out from under Kim, attempting to replace them with pillows. Inevitably, she stirred, then woke up.

It was ridiculously gratifying that her first impulse upon waking was to curl her fist into his shirt, as though to hold him close.

He could tell the moment she remembered their position. She stiffened and softly gasped, sitting up in the bed.

“Hey,” he said.

“Hey.”

“I, uh, sorry to wake you. I didn’t mean to. I was just going to head upstairs. You know, before AJ wakes up.”

“Of course. I mean, that’s the best thing.” Faint light through the window limned her silhouette. She reached up, ran a hand through her hair, mussing it in a way he found incredibly sexy.

“That’s what I thought, too. Yeah, so…” He stood up, stuck his feet into his Chuckies, the only article of clothing he’d removed the previous night. “So I’d better go.”

“Yes, all right.” There was a pause. “Bo?”

“Yeah?”

“Do you remember falling asleep last night?”

He cleared his throat. “Barely. I was out like a light. Swear